There's no excuse for Pirating games. 95% of the recent releases are available to buy online so the excuse of not wanting to deal with disks is off. if you think a game doesn't worth your money then don't buy it. wait for it to become cheaper or something. publishers and developers will get the idea. but pirating it and say you've done it because it doesn't worth money is just dumb.

also, suing individual pirates is the way to go. even if it won't stop pirating completely it will create a nice income for those companies. thr RIAA (music) gets a few thousands for each settlement. publishers can set their own torrents and emule connections and easily get IP addresses of pirates and sue their asses.

Further revelation from Activision has revealed that the people being sued weren't pirates as we think of them.

These guys were burning copies and selling them on streetcorners.

Probably one of the lowest forms of life.

If pirates are making money of the copying its very bad, but as far as filesharing goes its kind of useless to prosecute each and every person out there, and is it really worth it? Maybe the solutions are different.

Definitely, people who put things up, and especially people who make money on it should be gone after. The latter is plain parasiting and is simply bad for society.

Its as if youre a painter, and someone steals a copy of your work and resells it, it undoes the whole point of the free market, that good things are stimulated.

On the other hand at some points patents etc go to far, such as with certain forms of bioengineering (or maybe all).

"sounded off about game piracy on the PC" Who says you can't pirate games on a game console? Its not that hard to flash firmware or to install a modchop. There will ALWAYS be piracy, hackers will always find a way.

Its just a shame that we have to suffer because of them

Nobody realized this was posted on International Talk Like A Pirate Day?

uTorrent is the best client.

Not ALL PC gamers who download game torrents are pirates. If you're like me and lost your disc (or in my case, the game was stolen) and still have the serial, then I see absolutely no reason why I should go buy another copy.

well, i'll get lost in the blur here, but let me say:

support indie developers

there are plenty of folks out there making games that are not tied to tier-1 publishers. look for them, follow them, and you'll have just as much fun playing those games as you would the latest multi-million dollar blockbuster. maybe more-so.

They should be more active in trying to prevent piracy, rather than trying to ruin lives one person at a time. I hardy play games, but it sickens me like a bully taking advantage of someone smaller.

To reduce piracy they have to sell you a chaper more basic version of the game, no flashy box art, no disc art, no manual, just a very simple cd like case and and the game disc...

Noobs probably deserve it by using torrents. what a godawful invention. absolutely no protection for the unknowledgeable casual downloader vs other methods.

How about making products that customers would be willing to pay for instead of making rehashed garbage?

I'm not against prosecuting against piracy and support copyright holders who want to protect their product. Going against the little guy isn't the way to do it though and must be costly for the results, going against the infrastructure that supports piracy or companies that make mod chips etc is.

The settlement amounts are also pretty rediculous, most of it is to cover legal fees so the lawyers win again. If they just threatened people with legal action and said 'Pay $100 for the game you pirated' I bet they'd get a lot more cost-effective compensation from this. It wouldn't be as much of a deterrent though but neither are these lawsuits broadly speaking, people are going to pirate anyway.

I wonder though how that kind of gag order can work. I understand the defendants are agreeing to the terms but I also thought you aren't allowed to sign away basic rights like free speech?

As DerFunk alluded, I'd bet that every last one of these tools was getting their warez via bittorrent.

HOW LONG TILL PEOPLE WAKE UP? Bittorrent is NOT anonymous, not even close! You actively broadcast your IP and client info to everyone connected as part of the protocol. This is as dumb as walking down the street asking every person you see if they know where you can score hookers or blow.

man i hax them games all day long. I dare them to try and sue me

Since we know ISPs monitor torrent traffic :cough:Comcast:cough:, I think we will be seeing a lot more of this as they just go and subpoena ISP records.

The lawsuit doesn't specifically mention filesharing; you're sure they weren't making and selling physical copies?

Avast!

This topic be especially relevant considerin' today's date! Yaaaaaaargh!

DRM.

Oh yeah, because this will work. In fact, Activision, it will be just as effective as going after the pirates has been for the music and movie industries.

Cyril, by 'all' in the last sentence I think you may have meant 'none' :)